Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Creation debate: Mohler v. Collins

1. Having read Collins present his position in a number of books, it wasn't especially informative to me. The best part was the second part where they sat down and answered questions.

I disagree with some of his exegetical moves. But he has a very thoughtful position.

2. There were strengths and weaknesses in Mohler's case. One weakness is his appeal to the consensus fidelium. But that's just a fancy word for tradition. And tradition tends to be self-reinforcing. You believe it because the guy before you believed it, and he believed it because the guy before him believed it. But that makes belief its own justification, which is viciously circular. We need something to ground belief, and not just regressive or circular appeals to belief itself. Take urban legends that get passed on uncritically. To believe something just because other people believe it is a sorry substitute for evidence.

3. Another weakness was his appeal to the "plain, natural, normal, face-value" sense of the text. Problem is, that's not directly about what's in the text, but the impression it makes on the reader. Moreover, what's "plain, natural, or normal" to a modern reader may be far removed from what's "plain, nature, and normal" to the original audience. Unless we guard against it, our modern culture supplies reference frame for what we deem to be the "plain, natural, normal" meaning of the text.

In chapter 8 of Understanding Dispensationalists, Vern Poythress has some useful things to say about the ambiguities and unreliability of appeals to the plain or literal meaning of the text:

In addition, what seems to be the natural or face-value meaning of the text in isolation may take on a different meaning when we consider the wider context. Indeed, Mohler is aware of that.

4. Mohler's strongest objection to old-earth creationism is that proponents accept cosmology and geology, but reject (evolutionary) biology. That seems to be ad hoc.

Likewise, it's not just about time, but what evolutionary biologists and paleontologists say happened during that time.

5. One has to be careful about the ad hoc allegation. Even if the special creation of Adam and Eve in OEC seems ad hoc, one could say miracles in general seem ad hoc. After all, miracles are, by definition, discontinuous with the ordinary course of nature.

6. Which is not to deny that you can have makeshift positions along the creationist/evolutionist continuum. Consider people who say Gen 2 is factual when it talks about the special creation of Adam and Eve, but everything else in Gen 1-3 (or 1-11) is false of fictitious.

7. I'm skeptical about our ability to reconstruct the distant past. Can we seriously know what happened in the first three minutes of the Big Bang, some 14 billions years ago?

A paradox of reconstructing the past is that we lack direct access to the past. The present is our only available frame of reference. Residual evidence from the past. But how do we know that's a representative sample? And when you talk about billions of years, imagine the vast gaps in the surviving evidence.

8. A related problem is the assumption of linearity. But especially where creation is concerned, there's no presumption that the past resembles the present. For all we know, the universe may be like the "instant" past of a stage set about ancient Rome or the Old West. That's where the movie begins.

And this is more than a bare possibility. Any version of creation ex nihilo requires an element of mature creature. Something comes into being which is not the result of an antecedent natural state or process. And once we make allowance for that principle, it's hard to draw a line that isn't arbitrary. The issue then becomes how much was built into creation, and how much is due to natural development.

8. The theory of evolution isn't just theologically controversial, but scientifically controversial. It's controversial within the secular scientific community in a way that cosmology and geology are not.

So it's not just a question of conservative Christians drawing the line with evolutionary biology. Although secular scientists generally believe in the "fact" of evolution, there are raging debates over the theoretical underpinnings. Indeed, Collins said biologists admit to him in private that they don't think naturalistic evolution can get the job done.

9. Another issue that Mohler raised is whether OEC is unstable. Is there a firewall between OEC and theistic evolution or naturalistic evolution?

However, it's possible to turn that objection around. Many people who start out as young-earth creationists become theistic evolutionists or naturalistic evolutionists. So in that regard, one might contend that YEC is unstable. It has no give. Apostates who used to be youth-earth creationists continue to treat YEC as the standard of comparison, but they no longer believe it. They continue to believe that's the right interpretation of Gen 1-9, but they no longer believe in Scripture because they think science falsified YEC. And they had no fallback position. For them, the alternative to YEC is naturalistic evolution. So they become atheists.

In fairness to Mohler, he may mean OEC is unstable in the sense that it's a stopgap position, whereas YEC is a coherent position that presents a clear-cut alternative to theistic evolution and naturalistic evolution. It's an interesting question whether there's sociological data to answer the following questions:

i) How many Christians who start out as YEC remain YEC?

ii) How many Christians who start out as YEC become OEC?

iii) How many Christians who start out as YEC become theistic evolutionists?

iv) How many Christians who start out as YEC become naturalistic evolutionists?

v) How many Christians who start out as OEC remain OEC?

vi) How many Christians who start out as OEC become YEC?

vii) How many Christians who start out as OEC become theistic evolutionists?

viii) How many Christians who start out as OEC become naturalistic evolutionists?

Yes, you often ask about Sailhamer's view. I disagree with him on the identity of the "land".

Then there's the question of how he renders the syntax of Gen 1:14. I once emailed three Hebraists (John Currid, Davie Clines, Bruce Waltke) for their opinion regarding his grammatical argument, and got three different answers. Waltke panned it as an illegitimate way to render the Hebew. By contrast, Clines said it was grammatically legitimate, although he added that that didn't make it the correct rendering, since exegesis involves more than syntax. And I forget what Currid said. Unfortunately, that computer crashed and took that email folder with it into the cyber cemetery.

I appreciated the graciousness and proper attitude that OEC vs. YEC is an in-house debate. There is much that YEC can learn from both the Intelligent Design movement and the OEC. My position is a combination of all three and use aspects of each with wisdom, depending on the person we are talking to; especially in witnessing - for example, in witnessing to a militant atheist, I would use more ID and Design and Cosmological arguments at the beginning. But that is just were I am at this time.

As I recall, the first person I heard talk about that was Hugh Ross, who is an astro-physicist. Because he is so skilled at that scientific field, a lot of his scientific material goes over my head and I have no rebuttal to that kind of stuff.

I agree more with Mohler and other YEC on the exegesis; but Christians need to learn wisdom on what to start with atheists and Darwinian Evolutionists. I thought that Ken Ham should have used ID, Cosmological, and Design arguments against Bill Nye. Instead, Ham went straight to the 24 hour day, 6 day argument at the very beginning

In my experience, it's more common for theistic evolutionists to believe in soulless hominids. That's a stopgap to superficially reconcile evolution in general with the special creation of Adam and Eve.

"Why do OEC (some or most ?) believe in soul-less homids? As I recall, the first person I heard talk about that was Hugh Ross, who is an astro-physicist. Because he is so skilled at that scientific field, a lot of his scientific material goes over my head and I have no rebuttal to that kind of stuff."

Ross may be a skilled physicist, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's skilled at or conversant with human evolution. To be fair, at least as far as I'm aware, Ross usually leans on Faz Rana, who, if I recall, is a chemist.

It depends which hominids you're referring to. I think most OECs tend to accept Neanderthals are humans. This is based, for example, on genetic evidence Neanderthals interbred with humans.

In general, I think most OECs would say other hominids do have souls, just like the higher animals do, but having souls doesn't make these hominids human. They'd say these other hominids aren't necessarily made in the image of God.

If there are OECs who believe in soulless hominids, then they'd have to explain humans mating with soulless hominids (e.g. sinful bestiality, but how to explain the offspring?). Perhaps it'd be better for them to explain away the genetic evidence for Neanderthals mating with humans. Not sure how they would do this.

"I agree more with Mohler and other YEC on the exegesis; but Christians need to learn wisdom on what to start with atheists and Darwinian Evolutionists. I thought that Ken Ham should have used ID, Cosmological, and Design arguments against Bill Nye. Instead, Ham went straight to the 24 hour day, 6 day argument at the very beginning"

Ken Ham is far from the best representative for the YEC side. Although Bill Nye isn't the best representative for secular science either.

Thanks for all your answers. sorry for repeating my question about Sailhamer's view. I am getting forgetful. Yeah, his view of Eretz meaning "the land; ground" (the land of Israel) instead of the whole earth seems like a stretch.

I keep felling asleep listening to Mohler and Collins several times and waking up (not bored with them, just tired), and had to keep rewinding and listening over again, so forgive me if I missed it - but I did not understand Mohler's point about not understanding the age of the Universe as "apparent age".I thought that is exactly what YEC believe, that God created real age within the original creation, like Adam and Eve being something like 17-21 years old when created; the first trees having rings, etc. Would that not be "apparent" to our eyes and scientific methods of determining age.

Although Mohler is smart and widely-read, he may lack the sophistication to make the best case for his position. The basic insight of Gosse is that nature is cyclical. Therefore, creation ex nihilo will involve creating cycles. The moment of creation will have to "break" into the cycle. In could be sooner or later in the cycle. The point at which to break into the cycle is arbitrary in that respect.

Take the cliché of the chicken and the egg. These represent different phases of a cyclical process. If you were creating chickens ex nihilo, where would you begin? Would you create an egg, or a chick, or a full-grown chicken?

Or take a beach. A beach is normally the product of erosion. If God wants to create the first beach, he will have to start at some point in what would normally be an ongoing process.

Or take a garden. Normally, topsoil requirers dead, decaying organic material to be fertile. If God wants to create the first garden, orchard, or field, it will as if there was a preceding phase in the cycle, because the cycle itself is continuous. It has no natural starting point or end-point. At whatever phase in the cycle it's made, it will continue from thereon out.

Like God creating fruit trees. He can begin with seeds, or saplings, or full-grown trees. He can begin in spring or summer or autumn or winter. There is no one right place to commence that periodic process.